Our Trainers

Our trainers are specialized, conscientious and dynamic. They have extensive experience in the field and are superbly qualified.

marjorie Feinstein-Whittaker, MS

Marjorie Feinstein-Whittaker is an experienced corporate speech and communication consultant based in the Boston area. She is Massachusetts state-licensed, and nationally certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Marjorie specializes in designing accent and workplace communication programs for students and professionals in a wide variety of fields. Her clients include Fortune 500 Corporations, Big Four Accounting Firms, regional healthcare organizations, among others. The Whittaker Group’s goal is to help individuals from diverse cultural and professional backgrounds achieve excellent communication skills so they may reach their full potential.

Marjorie and her colleague Lynda Katz Wilner, created ESL RULES, LLC in 2006, and have presented regularly at national and international conferences, including the International Medical Interpreters Association. In addition, they have published extensively on the topic of accent modification.

Marjorie received her Bachelor’s in Speech-Language Pathology from Ithaca College, and her Master of Science in Communication Disorders from Boston University.

Carola E. Morton, FCCI

Carola E. Morton (formerly Green) is a federally certified English/Spanish court interpreter, language services consultant, interpreter trainer and test developer, as well as a former California state court interpreter. She served as key staff for the Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination (FCICE) and the Consortium for Language Access in the Courts (CLAC) programs at the National Center for State Courts. She has over twenty-five years of experience in professional interpreting in the legal and medical fields. Carola also has extensive experience in developing interpreter training curricula, training interpreters and is a licensed trainer for The Community Interpreter® International. Carola has co-authored interpreter training curricula including The Voice of Love’s Healing Voices, Interpreting for Survivors of Torture, War Trauma and Sexual Violence, and Ayuda’s Breaking Silence, Interpreting for Victim Services, featuring a workbook, glossary and training manual. Carola holds a BA in Communications and is originally from Guatemala.

Laurence jay-rayon ibrahim aibo, phd

Laurence Jay-Rayon Ibrahim Aibo (M.A. in translation and Ph.D. in translation studies from Université de Montréal) translates from English and German into European and Canadian French, is a certified translator in Quebec and certified healthcare interpreter in the United States. Dr. Ibrahim Aibo has been translating, teaching, and interpreting in the Americas, Europe, and Africa for the past 30 years, and teaching translation since 2013. She is a translator and interpreter trainer with various universities and organizations in the U.S. and Canada, and has trained hundreds of interpreters in educational settings. She is the Director of the Colony in Crisis in Haitian Creole Translation Project, author of The Politics of Translating Sound Motifs in African Fiction (Benjamins, 2020) and co-author of The Routledge Guide to Teaching Translation and Interpreting Online (Routledge, 2022).

Rita M. Monroy, MSc

Rita is a licensed trainer of The Community Interpreter® International with 10 years of experience as a legal interpreter. At Senior Service America, Inc. she has trained interpreter trainers and managed programs in five states (NC, AL, IN, TX and CA). Rita also has extensive experience in managing outreach programs to Hispanic communities across the country and has managed and directed communications projects for clients such as the CDC. A passionate advocate for Hispanic health, she has managed training programs for health and human services professionals across the country for organizations such as Farmworker Health Services, where she developed and implemented training services for community health centers across the country. Rita has also managed and implemented two national environmental programs for the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, and has worked with the Farmworker Justice Fund where she developed the first U.S. farmworker women’s conference. She is currently the Program Officer at Senior Service America, Inc. Rita received her Masters in Environmental Management from the University of London.

James W. Plunkett, III, FCCI

James Plunkett is a nationally-known interpreter instructor and trainer of trainers. He also trains new judges and court staff on how to work with court interpreters. James has worked as a court interpreter for the 13th Judicial Circuit in Florida and as the Coordinator of Interpreting Services and Language Access Program for the District of Columbia Courts. He is currently a staff interpreter for the U.S. District Court based in Tampa, Florida.

James is a federally certified Spanish/English court interpreter (FCCI) by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. He is an oral exam rater for a national credentialing program for interpreters. James holds a BA in General Social Studies from Providence College, Rhode Island and was raised in Lima, Peru. He also communicates in Portuguese, French, Mandarin and basic American Sign Language.

barrie j. roberts, jd, ma, llm

Barrie J. Roberts is the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Administrator for the Los Angeles Superior Court and the former ADR Administrator for the Riverside County Superior Court, working in both counties with judges, court staff, attorneys, neutrals and community mediation organizations to provide high-quality alternatives to trial.  She has provided ADR training for certified court interpreters, and she completed Cross-Cultural Communications’ 20-hour course, The Interpreter Trainer Online, in May 2020.

Barrie is also an ESL instructor at the university level, mainly teaching “Mediation as a Second Language” (MSL) courses she created to combine ADR and ESL for international students at UC Berkeley. Before working in ESL and ADR, Barrie was a staff attorney with Legal Services of Northern California, Inc., representing low-income persons in Sacramento.

Barrie has provided teacher training in MSL at international conferences including TESOL,  Global Legal Skills, and the Global Negotiation Symposium at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies in Japan. She is also an online mentor in legal English for a female attorney in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Barrie holds a B.A. in Political Science from UC Berkeley, a J.D. and Certificate in Public Interest Law from UC Hastings College of the Law, an LL.M. from the Pepperdine University School of Law, Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, and an M.A. in TESOL from CSU Sacramento.

Daniel Sanchez, CMI

Daniel Sanchez is a passionate leader with extensive experience and an accomplished career spanning 15 years in language access and Diversity & Inclusion. Currently residing in Miami, Florida, Daniel serves as Senior Engagement Manager and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Practitioner at Cloudbreak Health – a health care disparities company. Daniel leads the Cloudbreak Culture Council, a DEI committee created to improve workplace culture and increase employee engagement; and serves as key health equity and virtual care strategist for healthcare venues throughout the East Coast and Midwest.

He is an NBCMI certified Spanish<>English interpreter, a graduate of Penn State University Medical Interpreting program, graduate of the Diversity and Inclusion program at Cornell University, licensed diversity practitioner, licensed trainer of The Community Interpreter® International (TCII), and featured host of The Community Interpreter® Online (TCIO).

A member of the Latinx and LGBTQ+ community, Daniel has been a guest speaker at Physician Grand Rounds, Ethics Roundtables, served as Chair of the Diversity Committee at the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, served as Assistant Administrator of the American Translator’s Association Leadership Council and as member of the Ethics Committee at the International Medical Interpreter’s Association. He is an active member of the National Diversity Council, the National Association of Latino Healthcare Executives (NALHE) and a volunteer at the Human Rights Campaign. Daniel is a passionate advocate of social justice and health equity.

Madap Sharma, MA

Madap Sharma currently works as Community Resource Developer for the Unaccompanied Refugee Minor Program with Bethany Christian Services. He also serves as Language Consultant, interpreter and interpreter trainer for medical legal and community settings. He commands proficiency in four South Asian languages and English.

Prior to this role, Madap worked as Director for Refugee Resettlement in Lancaster, PA. Madap has been involved with refugee works since 2012 first with Lutheran Children and Family Service and later with Bethany.

Prior to joining the URM works, Madap served as faculty of English as a Second Language at Stratford University in Virginia and at Baltimore City Community College, Baltimore. Madap has years of pedagogic, andragogic and managerial experiences both in the U.S and abroad.

Madap is the Founding President of the Bhutanese American Organization- Philadelphia (BAO-P), a 501(c)3 that works with and for Bhutanese Refugees in their transition to the American system. Madap has been a vocal voice and advocate for refugees. He lives with his wife, son and extended family in NE Philadelphia.

Madap holds a Masters of Philosophy and a Masters of Sociology from India as well as a Masters of Arts in English Language Teaching from Nepal.

Barry Slaughter Olsen, MA

Barry Slaughter Olsen is a veteran conference interpreter and technophile with over twenty-five years of experience interpreting, training interpreters and organizing language services. He is an associate professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), the Co-Founder and Co-President of InterpretAmerica, and General Manager of Multilingual Operations at ZipDX. He is a member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC). Barry is the author of “The Tech-Savvy Interpreter,” a monthly column in Jost Zetzsche’s Tool Box Journal and accompanying occasional video series focusing on interpreting technology. For updates on interpreting, technology and training, follow him on Twitter @ProfessorOlsen.

Kelly (Grzech) Henriquez, CHI-Spanish, CMI-SPanish

Kelly (Grzech) Henriquez is a dual-certified Spanish medical/healthcare interpreter in Richmond, Virginia. She acquired her BA from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) with a concentration in Spanish and completed their SETI (Spanish/English Translation and Interpretation) program. Kelly began her career in language services as a Bilingual Patient Advocate at a local safety net clinic and has since been interpreting on-site in both medical and mental health facilities. During the pandemic, she began her YouTube channel for interpreters in an effort to provide free and accessible continuing education.  Shortly thereafter, she also became a medical interpreter trainer with Americans Against Language Barriers (AALB) and was recently recognized as the 2023 AALB Interpreter Educator of the Year.

Cynthia E. Roat, MPH

Cynthia E. Roat is an interpreter trainer and international consultant on language access in health care and patient navigation. A native of upstate New York, she spent a decade working in rural areas of Latin America before moving to Seattle to earn her Masters degree in International Public Health from the University of Washington. Ms. Roat entered the interpreting world in 1992 and quickly became certified by Washington State as a medical and social-service Spanish-English interpreter. Her interest in systems change, however, led her into teaching interpreters, trainers and medical providers the basics of interpreting practice and consulting with healthcare administrators around the country on how to improve their language access programs. In the mid-2010s, Ms. Roat spent three years at Seattle Children’s Hospital, managing their unique Bilingual Patient Navigator program, before returning to her national consulting work.   

Over the past three decades, Ms. Roat has made significant contributions, both in the U.S. and abroad, in many areas of language access. She is the author of a wide array of key resources in the field and the primary developer of the original version of Bridging the Gap, for many years the country’s most widely-offered training for health care interpreters. Her most recent book, Healthcare Interpreting in Small Bites, is being adopted as an ancillary text in many interpreter training programs. Ms. Roat has consulted for a variety of large medical centers and healthcare systems. Always concerned about building grassroots capacity, Ms. Roat has been a mentor to interpreters, trainers and Language Access Coordinators around the U.S. She is a founding member of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care (NCIHC), where she currently serves on the board, a founding member of the Washington State Coalition on Language Access (WASCLA), and a former board member of the Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society (NOTIS) where she organized regular interpreter training workshops through Community Interpreter Division. She is known nationally as an engaging speaker, a knowledgeable resource, and an energetic advocate for language access in general.

Yuliya Speroff

Yuliya is a Russian-English CoreCHI-P™ and WA DSHS-certified medical and social services interpreter. She currently works as a medical interpreter supervisor at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. In her current role she supports a team of medical interpreters, manages translation projects and bilingual staff assessment. 

Yuliya fulfills her passion for teaching through her work with the non-profit Americans Against Language Barriers and providing continuing education workshops for medical interpreters. Yuliya is on the board of directors of The California Healthcare Interpreting Association (CHIA) and a member of the National Council on Interpreting in Healthcare (NCIHC) STC Work Group.

Yuliya is the author of the Medical Interpreter Blog, which provides medical interpreting resources and information for professional development.

Enrica J. Ardemagni, PhD

Enrica J. Ardemagni holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin with a focus on Medieval Literature and Historical Linguistics and an M.A. and B.A. in Spanish from the University of Arkansas.  Currently she is Professor Emerita at Indiana University Indianapolis where she taught all levels of language and literature as well as Spanish for the Professions and Specific Purposes (SPSP-business, legal, medical). She developed over fifteen courses in translation and translation studies and interpreting and served as Director of the Undergraduate and Graduate Certificates in Translation Studies and Director of Graduate Studies. She has published and presented over sixty scholarly articles and presentations and she is a published literary translator.

Marjory Bancroft, MA

Marjory is the Founder and former Director of CCC. She has lived in eight countries and studied seven languages. In addition to a BA and MA in French linguistics from Québec, she holds advanced language certificates from universities in Spain, Germany and Jordan. Her career spans interpreting, translation, teaching English or translation for two universities in Quebec and Jordan, teaching English or French for language schools in Germany and France, continuing education and immigrant schools in Quebec City and Montreal, the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC and running a nonprofit interpreting service in Maryland while interpreting and translating. She has authored numerous publications, including interpreting textbooks, workbooks and trainer guides sold to 30 countries and all 50 U.S. states. A past board member of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care, she has sat on several national and international committees and was the world project leader for an ISO international standard on interpreting.

Michelle P. Gallagher

Michelle Gallagher has more than 15 years of experience in facilitation and management of professional training programs for international audiences. She has taught at the Universidad Europea de Madrid and managed training organizations in Madrid and Maryland. She has also worked as a freelance Spanish interpreter and translator. Michelle received her BA in International Relations from Tulane University and her MBA in Marketing and General Management from the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business. She spent nine years living in Madrid, where she received her MA in Conference Interpreting at the Universidad de Cluny – ISEIT. Since 2012, she has developed and delivered several interpreter training programs for community interpreters with a special focus on educational interpreting.

Michelle has volunteered for Youth For Understanding, an international student exchange program, since 2003 and was elected Webmaster for the National Capital Area Translators Association (NCATA) in 2018.

John Arroyave, MBA

John Arroyave is a professional Spanish<>English interpreter and a passionate advocate for language access and professional interpreting. John has trained hundreds of interpreters and has worked with countless health systems, behavioral health systems, state hospitals, school systems, court systems, school districts, non-profits and government agencies in his 20+ year career.

John has been informally interpreting since he was a child. He has worked intensively as an advocate for language access and is a firm believer in the far-reaching benefits of language access for all members of a community.  As the son of emigrants, John has a special love for both the English Learner Community and for the Deaf Community. John has seen, and experienced, the profoundly impactful, life-changing, and often life-saving, benefits of language access and professional interpreting. 

In his role as an interpreter trainer and Director of CCC, John works to instill a profound understanding of the need for a standards and ethics driven approach to interpreting centered on a deep understanding of the guiding principle of the profession: communicative autonomy.

Tatiana González-Cestari, Phd, CHI-Spanish

Tatiana has 22 years of combined experience as a pharmacist, pharmacologist, researcher, professor, manager, and remote interpreter. Tatiana is passionate about quality, innovation, compliance and cultural sensitivity in language access. She serves as the Director of Language Service Advocacy at Martti by UpHealth; is part of the NCIHC Board of Directors and Policy, Education and Research committee; contributor to Martti’s blog; and co-author of The Remote Interpreter textbook. Tatiana has mentored, developed training, presented at national and international events, published peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed articles, and lectured at various universities. Tatiana obtained her pharmacy degree and her Ph.D. in pharmacology from Universidad Central de Venezuela.

Analía C. Lang

Analía C. Lang, CHI-Spanish, a Panama native, acquired her BA from Indiana University with a concentration in training, development, and communications. She has been a community interpreter since 2005. Analia has interpreted in all modalities, face-to-face, VRI and OPI. She has a passion for training, empowering and inspiring individuals to pursue excellence in language access, equity, cultural competence, and all forms of interpretation.

As a trainer, Analía has instructed interpreters for more than 15 years. She has developed webinars, workshops, and training curricula for the interpreting community. She has been a presenter at conferences, and she is a contributing author on The Remote Interpreter textbook. She serves as a member of the NCIHC Standards and Training Committee and as a co-chair of its National Standards of Practice work group. Analía is humbled, honored, and excited to be a member of the CCC team.

Liz Essary, MSW

Before completing her Masters in Social Work, Liz Essary enjoyed a vibrant 20-year career in language services, as a Spanish interpreter in healthcare, court, and event settings.  She also taught language and interpreting courses in both university and non-academic settings. She completed her MSW at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, where she was a fellow in the Trauma Education Program and Global Leaders of Behavioral Health Education (GLOBE), and at the Race Equity Leadership and Research Collective. She is a trainee in the 3-year Somatic Experiencing International course, where she is studying how to safely bring attention to the body in therapeutic settings. Liz is currently a masters-level clinician who provides individual, family, and group therapy in English and Spanish in an outpatient setting.